The Fall of Gilgalad
by annafan
Summary: Eowyn discovers Faramir and her children tending to an unexpected new addition to the family. Pure, unadulterated syrup! Happy Belated Birthday, Sian.


Éowyn sat heavily on the bench in the porch. Baby number three was sitting heavily in her pelvis in the summer's heat. Grunting with the effort, she prised her boots off, then waddled into the Emyn Arnen kitchen.

"M'lady, with respect..."

 _Shit, something had upset cook_. Éowyn knew there would be hell to pay unless she could smooth her ruffled feathers.

"Little lord Elboron and little lady Theodwyn, m'lady..."

 _Béma's arse, what had her wretched children got up to now?_

"They've made off with the wire rack I use for cooling cakes. I should be grateful..." The cook drew herself up to her full height of 5'3", level with Éowyn's nose, the very picture of offended dignity… "If you could see fit to persuade them to return it. M'lady." The last was added almost as an afterthought.

"I shall pursue the matter immediately," replied Éowyn (wondering as she spoke what it was about the cook's offended dignity that caused her to respond with such an unnatural pomposity). _Béma, these bloody Gondorian airs and graces are catching. Like the blasted ague._

Éowyn gave a sigh, then padded off down the corridor to the wing where the children's bedchambers lay. Just as she was about to lay her hand on the latch of Elboron's door, a noise from within gave her pause.

A yelp, followed by an explosive "CURSED..." followed by a pause, followed by a distinctly subdued and unconvincing "Crumhorns."

"Ada, is that a rude word?" came Elboron's piping voice.

"Shh, Ada. Scare Gilgalad!" Theodwyn's toddler treble added to the mix.

Smiling, Éowyn lifted the latch to see what was going on.

Her husband was kneeling on the floor beside a tin box, the cook's cake rack, and a length of wire which looked as if it had been taken from the work bench where the armourer made quick repairs on items only superficially damaged. A hammer, bradawl and pliers lay abandoned on the floor. _(Hammer and bradawl? The man was a menace!_ _A lifetime of a soldier's make-do-and-mend had left Faramir with scant respect for the notion of "the right tool for the job".)_

Faramir was sucking his thumb. A smear of blood adorned his shirt tail where he'd obviously wiped the mortal wound. The two children were kneeling either side of a tin box. The box's original inhabitants, a collection of ivory chess pieces, were cast across the hearth rug like the vanquished foes of a conquering army. (One of those pieces, Éowyn recalled with an inward smile, had played a part in her current condition). Their place in the box was now occupied by the triumphant new ruler of the children's affections, a small, twitching, brown mouse.

"What are you doing with cook's cake rack, my love? She's rather cross about it."

"Ada make mouse house," announced Theodwyn. "For Gilgalad."

"We need the cake rack so Gilgalad can breathe," added Elboron. "If we put the lid on the tin, he'd suffocate."

"Oh..." said Éowyn, looking at Faramir and raising her eyebrows. She turned back to the children. "Where did Gilgalad come from?"

"Squishy cushions," said Theodwyn, pointing at the corner of the room where there was indeed a heap of cushions.

"He was just sitting there. He was very easy to catch. Look, he likes being stroked."

Elboron picked the mouse up – very gently – and sat it on the palm of his hand. The mouse sat there, looking a bit dopey and dazed.

"Mousey like strawberry," Theodwyn said, approvingly. Eowyn noticed the streaks of strawberry juice on her fingers, and the slightly squashed fruit in the corner of the wooden box. A fruit bearing a few little scrape marks on it, from the mouse's teeth.

"The mouse doesn't look that well," Éowyn observed. "I think Beruthiel must have caught it and played with it for a bit." She shot a warning glance at Faramir, but he was now absorbed in the task of poking a line of holes round the lip of the tin.

"I'm going to wire the cake tray onto the box, like a hinged lid." It appeared that her beloved husband was in a world of his own, a world shrunk to the size of the task of attaching the wire frame to the tin.

Éowyn decided she might actually get more sense out of the children. "What I'm trying to say is that the mouse might not be terribly well. Beruthiel might have hurt it on the inside. It might be kinder to put it in the garden where it can run away and hide and..." Her voice tailed off. The two upturned faces shone with a quietly determined hope.

"Strawberries make Gilgalad better," Theodwyn announced with the confidence of a three year old who has solved the key philosophical problem of the universe.

~0~0~0~

"You know it almost certainly won't survive the night," Éowyn said. She shifted her bulk awkwardly across the mattress. Faramir followed her, snuggling against the small of her back. She sighed and stuck a leg out from beneath the sheet in an attempt to cool herself. Normally, she would be more than happy with his affection. But with the warm summer air heating her from without and her uterus seemingly turned into a furnace intent on heating her from within, right now she wished she could think of a kind way of telling Faramir that she'd much prefer it if he stayed on his own side of the bed.

"I fear you are right, my love." His voice was muffled by her hair.

"Then why in Béma's name did you encourage them?"

"I simply didn't have the heart to tell them."

Éowyn sighed. She loved her husband dearly, but sometimes he could be a daft child himself.

"You are far too soft for your own good… or theirs."

~0~0~0~

To the lady's intense surprise, the animal survived the night. Theodwyn was noisily excited, Elboron more quietly so. The focal point of their excitement was even more subdued than it had been the previous night, however. A token strawberry and a piece of apple, together with a handful of oats, were added to the corner of the tin. Elboron lovingly put fresh water in its saucer, Theodwyn added an extra handful of straw.

Éowyn spent the day touring some of the local villages and small holdings to assess how the harvest was coming along. She trotted along woodland tracks on her mare, with Theodwyn bouncing in front of her, clinging to the pommel of the saddle. Cynefrid, her sergeant at arms who had accompanied her from the Mark, rode behind with a couple of pikesmen. Occasionally Éowyn jibbed at Faramir's insistence on her having an entourage, but however much it chafed, she had to admit that the woods were not yet entirely safe.

Assessing the crops was one of her tasks on the estate, coming as she did from Aldburg in the Folde. It was there, and further to the east, where the Mark grew most of its cereal crops (the poor soil of the wilder Westfold was fit only for grazing animals). She recognised this survey as an important job, if somewhat dull. The first few years after the war had seen some hard years, and it was always good to know well in advance whether contingency plans would have to be made for a poor harvest. This year, however, the hot sunshine of Norúi had persisted into Cerveth (in her head, Eowyn didn't make the distinction – both periods fell in Sólmánaður, around the longest day). The wheat and barley rose high in the fields; the only worry was that it might wither on the stalk without water. But fortunately Ithilien was watered by snow melt from the mountains, and the villagers, though they were but newly returned to these slopes after the war, still had a few old folk who remembered the time before they had fled the forces of Sauron, and were able to direct the young men in the best way of digging and directing irrigation ditches.

It was late in the afternoon when she returned to Emyn Arnen. Faramir was waiting for her, looking distressed. Before either adult could speak, however, Theodwyn piped up.

"Want Gilgalad."

Faramir reached up and lifted the toddler down from her place before her mother.

"Theodwyn, my dear, brave little shieldmaiden. Sad tidings. Your little mouse is..."

Faramir's voice petered out. He was clearly searching for a suitable way of phrasing the news for a small child. Éowyn, from her vantage point above the scene, harrumphed quietly to herself. He'd got himself into this mess; he could get himself out of it. Again, though, Theodwyn pre-empted her parents.

"Beruthiel eat Gilgalad?" she asked. Her voice was very matter of fact.

Faramir looked slightly surprised, but pulled himself together. "I think Beruthiel tried to, yesterday, and it hurt Gilgalad so badly that he died. Some time this afternoon."

"Oh," came the response. "Get 'nother mouse?"

Éowyn swung herself down from the saddle.

"Where's Elboron," she asked.

"Alas, he lies in his chamber, weeping," Faramir replied. "I have tried to comfort him, but… well, 'inconsolable' is the word that springs to mind."

"I'll go to him now," Éowyn said. Without heed to her riding boots (and the likely later confrontation with the housekeeper over the trail of mud) she left Theodwyn with her father, and swept into the hall and down the passage which led to Elboron's room. Here she found him, face down on the bed, brown hair tousled across his pillow. His slim shoulders shook every so often with another sob – he had clearly reached that stage where he had almost run out of tears. Éowyn sat on the bed and patted his back. She never felt terribly good at this part of motherhood.

"There, there," she murmured (thinking as she did so how ineffectual her words sounded). Elboron raised himself and threw his arms round her middle (or rather, where her middle had once been) and buried his face in her lap, a fresh flurry of tears escaping him.

~0~0~0~

An hour or so later, the family gathered beside the rambling rose which climbed the back wall of the kitchen garden. Faramir crouched beside Elboron, scooping soil to one side with his hands as Elboron dug a very small hole with a trowel. The hole finished, Theodwyn advanced with poor Gilgalad's mortal remains, wrapped in a handkerchief of her mother's. Very solemnly, the mouse was interred and the soil scooped back over it.

"Do they have mouse holes in Namo's halls?" Elboron asked, his voice very earnest.

"I'm sure they do," Faramir answered. The children stood for a moment, looking at the freshly turned earth. Their reflection was interrupted by a cheery voice from the kitchen door, open behind them.

"The honey cakes are ready."

 _Honey cakes? On a Wednesday?_ Eowyn thought with surprise, then realised that Faramir had probably put the cook up to baking them. So he was, it turned out, more than up to the task of sorting out the mess he had made.

The children scampered up the path between the herb beds. Éowyn watched them, then turned back to look at the rose bed. In her mind's eye, she did not see the rambling rose, but instead, Elboron sobbing into her lap. She blinked, feeling something prick at her eyes.

From behind her, a pair of arms reached around her, nestling in the space between her rounded belly and breasts. Faramir's words stirred her hair softly as he whispered to her.

"You're too soft for your own good." She swore she could feel his lips turn into a smile against her cheek. "But just right for theirs."


End file.
